Blog

By Jessica Rohman

Blog

By Ed Frauenheim

Great workplaces make work more like play. Or at least build a lot more play into the work experience than companies overall. Fun is partly about perks, but it’s mostly about culture. About rituals like Nerf gun fights, happy hours, birthday bashes and group volunteer days.

Blog

By China Gorman

PWC’s 17th annual global CEO report “Good to Grow: 2014 US CEO Survey”, provides a thorough snapshot of executive leadership perspectives and approaches at the current moment. PWC’s report includes perspectives from over 1,300 CEOs from 68 countries, including 162 CEOs with US-headquartered organizations. It’s clear from the responses that, globally, CEOs are making many changes within their organizations. For example, 86% of CEOs stated that advancing technologies are going to transform their businesses over the next five years. Positively, PWC’s data also suggests that CEOs are finding reasons to be more confident in many places (89% of US CEOs are fairly sure their companies will deliver revenue growth this year). In this period of rapid change though, what approaches are CEOs taking, and what insights can they offer?

October 14, 2014

Blog

By China Gorman

ADP recently released a report which, based on data they’ve collected from several studies, examines the causes and implications of a persistent disconnect recorded between HR’s and employees’ perceptions. The topic is an interesting one: despite the vast improvement in and efficiency of communications tools and processes that we’ve witnessed over the years, employees and HR departments have seemed to maintain notably differing perceptions on many key human capital management effectiveness issues. This disparity holds true globally, and in companies of all sizes. ADP has noted this trend in three of their ADP Research Institute® global studies in 2013: Quantifying Great Human Capital Management, Employee Perspectives on Human Capital Management, and HR 360. All three studies measured perceptions of status and value of the HR function and showed consequential differences between employees and HR in key areas such as how well employees were being managed, how well questions regarding HR and benefits issues were addressed, whether feedback was communicated or even collected, and in performance evaluations. Data indicate that similar gaps in perception exist between HR and senior management on these same topics, and as ADP points out, these differences matter because they may be indicative of larger problems within organizations – such as whether investments in HR technology are actually delivering the results of more effective communication, or whether advantages of a strategic HR function are being actively sought and realized.

October 7, 2014

Blog

By China Gorman

IBM recently released an executive report: “Making change work… while the work keeps changing – How change architects lead and manage organizational change.” The report, based on data from their latest “Making Change Work Study” seems a very pertinent one for the times. As a whole, we know that this is a period of significant change for the workforce, we talk about these changes, and how they can and are affecting organizations, but there is significantly less talk around how organizations are successfully managing such change – which is exactly what IBM’s report dives into. As IBM states, “the gap between the magnitude of change and the ability of organizations to manage it continues to widen.” While many organizations are struggling to close this gap, IBM identifies a select few – change architects – that have “found the keys to making change work while the work keeps changing.” IBM’s data is based on survey results from almost 1,400 individuals responsible for designing, creating or implementing change across their respective organizations. In IBM’s study, they consider only the top 20 percent of organizations to be highly successful when it comes to change management. These “Change Architects” are organizations that indicated at least 75% of their projects were a complete success (i.e. a minimum of three-in-four projects met all predefined goals).

September 30, 2014

Blog

By Lillian J. LeBlanc

Blog

By China Gorman

Approximately 80 million Millennials live in the U.S today. In my last post on Talent Acquisition Trends I touched on the fact that this group is the largest generation in history and, while the exact percentages vary depending on the research, is expected to make up more than 50% of the workforce by 2020. We may still think of Millennials as “the next generation” but the fact is that this group will make up the majority of the workforce in the not too distant future, so research on the values and expectations of this generation is valuable – and actionable. A great example of this kind of research is the “2014 Millennial Impact Report: Inspiring the Next Generation Workforce” by Achieve, whose purpose for the research is to “Understand Millennials’ preferences for cause work and to share those findings with organizations that are looking to better engage this influential group.” Surveys were distributed to Millennial employees of corporate research partners from various industries, as well as a generic survey with respondents representing more than 300 companies and organizations across the United States. For the study, Millennials were defined as individuals born after 1979.

Blog

By Jessica Rohman

Blog

By China Gorman

Ultimate Software (#20 on this year’s FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work for list) just released a whitepaper that looks at 5 top talent acquisition trends in today’s market. As much data as we might see on talent acquisition, it’s a perpetually interesting topic to look at because (and Ultimate Software puts it well), “A company can have the right technology, the right infrastructure, the right products and services – yet still fall short of expectations without the right people.” People are the heart and soul of an organization, and attracting, hiring, and engaging the right people for an organization is vital to its growth and success. Ultimate Software highlights that over the past five years we’ve seen a huge change in the landscape of talent acquisition. We’re still in the midst of an ongoing economic recovery and Millennials, who are the largest generation in history, (~95 million compared with ~78 million Baby Boomers) are currently filling one out of every three positions in the United States. By 2025, they are projected to make up 75% of employees in the global marketplace. Add this to the incredibly competitive, fast-paced, technologically advanced, and increasingly inter-connected world that we live in and hiring the ‘right’ person becomes “both more difficult and more important than ever.”

By Jessica Rohman

Blog

By China Gorman

The Deloitte “2014 Core Beliefs and Culture Study” proves it again, that those workplaces who focus on creating a meaningful environment for all their stakeholders (customers, employees, and communities) foster a culture of purpose that builds confidence, drives investment, and “can lead to competitive advantage in a time of economic vitality.” The survey was conducted in February of this year and is designed to explore the concept of workplace culture, defined by a set of timeless core values and beliefs, as a business driver. This year’s survey looks specifically at whether a strong sense of purpose leads to higher levels of confidences among stakeholders and drives business growth. Methodology included the survey of a sample of 1,053 adults (300 executives and 753 employed adults) employed full time within an organization with at least 100 employees.

By Jessica Rohman

Blog

By China Gorman

When HR professionals were asked to rank two critical leader skills for leaders’ success in the next three years, and how much their organization’s current development programs focuses on them, the level of focus of most skills corresponded to how critical the skills were perceived to be for the future.

August 19, 2014

Blog

By China Gorman

Company cultures, the good, the bad, and – well in the interest of being nice we'll leave it at that – have been the focus at Great Place to Work® for the last 25 years, since Robert Levering and Milton Moskowitz researched their book The 100 Best Workplaces in America. What their research revealed is that the key to creating a great workplace revolves not around the building of a certain set of benefits and practices, but through the building of high-quality relationships in the workplace, relationships characterized by trust, pride, and camaraderie. What we call a great company culture. As Erin Osterhaus, researcher for HR technology reviewer Software Advice, points out in her blog about a recent survey, the term "company culture" has seen an astronomical rise in use since 1980, due in part to publications like The 100 Best Workplaces in America, as well as companies' recognition that culture has a direct impact on how happy, and healthy employees are– and, how well they perform. With the rise in attention to the topic of company culture, enter the adoption of roles created specifically to focus on company culture. As Osterhaus points out, Google, #1 on the FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For List for the last three years, was one of the first companies to adopt such a position (Chief Culture Officer) in 2006.

August 12, 2014

Blog

By China Gorman

A recent report from CareerXroads, “Sources of Hire 2014: Filling the Gaps” by Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler, aims to continue the conversation about the data collection issues, source of hire trends, and challenges related to the recruiting supply chain. The report looks at 50 large firms (all with well-known brands) that filled 507,425 openings in the U.S. last year. This was the work of ~6000 recruiters and sourcers (80+ openings filled by each).